Editorial

Jeff Muldoon

Journal of Management History

ISSN: 1751-1348

Article publication date: 21 November 2023

Issue publication date: 21 November 2023

188

Citation

Muldoon, J. (2023), "Editorial", Journal of Management History, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 453-455. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-08-2023-303

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited


This is the final issue of the year, culminating my first year as sole editor of the journal. I am very happy with the direction of the journal and the articles we have published this year. In fact, I believe the articles in this issue are strong, varied and interesting. These articles combine some of the best aspects of the journal: traditional history and the use of history to exchange current practice and theory. As I stated in my first solo editorial, I explained the importance of history in management. A point that was demonstrated to me at the Academy of Management – where various scholars used historical concepts to examine unethical practices of business, theory and management research. In doing so, each of these papers digs deeper into the meaning of management.

Our first article by Matteo Cristofaro, Federico Giannetti and Gianpaolo Abatecola covered the topic of unicorns – that is, corporations whose growth is very fast and rapid, as exemplified by such companies as Uber, or in this case, Snapchat. In fact, the topic of unicorns is a special issue in the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, edited by Matteo, Joahn Kask and myself. Given the historical importance of fast-growing companies, this is a key topic of interest for this journal as well.

As in the case of finance, risk and return are inversely related, meaning that if a corporation has incredible growth, it should also have incredible risk. A source of this risk is the liability of newness, which is the different dangers of “dying” that occur during a firm’s lifetime. One of those risks is that the firm does not demonstrate enough profit (or any profit) during its early livelihood – despite the potential high return of the corporation. There are several factors that cause liability, and these include lack of experience, miscoordination and a lack of customer relationships. However, for unicorns, this risk appears to be different than it would be for a newer company – again suggestive of the unicorn being a different type of species than a normal company.

This paper used a single case of Snapchat to demonstrate how a unicorn could survive its early days and overcome the liability of newness. In particular, the case study examined key strategic decisions based on secondary data and thematic analysis of the founders and investors. The authors found that the network effect of Snapchat (the more people use it, the more valuable the product becomes) leads to cognitive biases (such as optimism) that lead to investors truly believing in the product. In essence, liability of newness could be overcome through the network effect because it has demonstrated that the product already has value to customers. The implication of the article was that not all cognitive biases are bad.

Our next paper is Natasha Saqib’s literature review of positioning strategies. Again, this paper represented the shift in the journal to publishing literature reviews – which are an important source for guiding the literature by providing a synthesis of the various themes. This is an interesting paper that should be highly read because positioning strategies are an important topic in strategic management in both the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. This literature review was based upon an overview of journal articles published from 1969 until 2022 and used qualitative text mining: classification, coding and text analysis. In particular, the paper found the identification of three generic positioning strategies – but also a distinction between conceptually derived strategies (typology) and those empirically derived (taxonomy).

The major theme of the paper was, in my opinion, that scholars need to be very precise in our definitions of terms. For example, until I read this paper, I would not have really considered the difference between typology and taxonomy. I feel that this lack of precision leads to misunderstanding. However, studying a term or idea or findings from a historical perspective better enables the scholar to untangle how a topic has evolved over time and allows for more precise definitions, which could increase understanding.

Our next paper is on Quakers by Garry D. Bruton and Naiheng Sheng. This article examined the profit maximization on the part of a religious organization. One of the common assumptions in neoclassical economics is that there is a drive on the part of organizational stewards to maximize profits for shareholders. This assumption runs through a wide range of strategic management theories, including agency theory, transaction cost economics and, surprisingly, corporate social responsibility. In particular, scholars assume that executives who do not maximize profits are bound to die. Bruton and Sheng challenged this assumption by examining the Society of Friends, popularly known as the Quakers. The importance of the Quakers is that they were economically successful (unlike some other religious groups), and they also preferred a life of simplicity, which meant they traditionally downplayed the importance of the maximization of profits.

However, Bruton and Sheng demonstrated that Quakers, who did not adhere to this assumption, did well economically. There are several points to be made about this paper. Firstly, like the Swab paper above, Bruton and Sheng demonstrated that we must be careful in using terms such as profit – which are open ended and could mean any number of things. In this case, profit could mean something beyond economic return – but also an increase in utility, such as doing work for the community or a deity. Second, they also demonstrated the importance of history for building and examining theory, as history at times is more complex and nuanced than other methods of theorizing.

The next paper by Fabio Barbieri and João Fernando Rossi Mazzoni examined the most forgotten figure in management and economic history, Jean-Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil. Before providing a summary of the paper, I must note that this paper won the Journal of Management History Best Paper at the 2023 Academy of Management and was selected as one of the best papers. This paper provided a historical analysis of Courcelle-Seneuil’s The Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Industrial, Commercial and Agricultural Enterprises: A Business Manual (1855) and Ergonomics, the second part of the book Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Political Economy (1858). Of particular interest was the idea that there was a French scholar writing about scientific management around the time of Charles Babbage. In addition, unlike Babbage and Andrew Ure, this approach also had a strong focus on entrepreneurship.

A common joke is that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. As Nancy Evelyn Day pointed out in her article – perhaps we should reconsider these jokes. This is the type of profession that is not normally talked about when it comes to management discourse largely because it is both illegitimate and illegal. As such, prostitution is a topic that does not warrant enough consideration in the business ethics literature, even though sex is a commodity that is sold to complete business deals. In fact, as the recent Harvey Weinstein scandal proved, sex is a commodity in certain industries demanded by certain gatekeepers, and sex becomes an entryway into that profession. More generally, prostitution is often the last resort for people struggling to survive in society, and prostitutes suffer from a lack of concern.

Day examined how prostitutes can reduce negative stigmas related to their profession. In this case, context plays a key role. Sex workers who are in riskier roles (such as a street walker) are not as able to overcome the positive self-identities that brothel workers are able to develop. This self-identity comes from richer resources (presumably from a higher-paying clientele) but also from social capital, sharing ideas and empowerment. In addition, brothels also have owners who understood how valuable their sex workers were and sought to develop them and provide support. Finally, the paper offered insights on how we could improve the conditions of sex workers in our society.

We go from sex workers to Venice and shipbuilding. This paper by James M. Wilson and Alvise Favotto was a well-researched and written paper that is a real page turner. The purpose of this article was to examine issues that emerge when we have complicated supply chains and multiple years of production cycles – not dissimilar from shipbuilding in modern times. In particular, this paper focused on the Arsenale – which was the largest medieval industrial enterprise that had a famous assembly line and also faced extreme variations between peacetime and wartime demands. This study had several notable findings. The authors found that Venice transitioned from exploiting woodlands to the management of planting, cultivating, and harvesting. Venice also managed trees by shaping them as they were still growing.

This was an extremely interesting set of articles which reflects the unique nature of both the journal and the use of history in management research. Namely, we encourage and desire articles that take an interesting position or provide a unique example. This broad view allows us to examine theory and practice from a different lens than most mainstream accounts. In addition, the use of historical analysis is a flexible tool that allows for heterogeneity in both viewpoint and research. My sincere hope is that we continue this in the future.

Desjardins, Gould and Park have written an excellent paper on the meaning of free offerings in the digital age, a topic that has been mostly ignored by management scholars. This has been, as the article points out, partly due to the influence of Milton Friedman, who famously pointed out that there is no such thing as a free lunch—referring to the idea that there are opportunity costs as well as someone has to pay for the product. While Friedman is economically correct, nevertheless, a company can gain customers by offering them products, just like Gillette did when they offered me a free Excel razor blade when I turned 18. In the process, they gained a loyal customer for a period of nearly 30 years. Desjardins et al point out the key influence of free goods have upon driving demand for a product. Basically, a free offering can be something of a loss leader, in that the free offering is a loss, but you may gain a customer down the road. As such, it is an important concept that has been treated as a mere tactic, rather than an actual strategic move.

I also found the conclusion to be of enormous interest. Namely, I believe that the authors are correct, the shift to the digital age (with products that have a zero marginal cost) and new industries coming into existence, the role of free will play an even larger role. In addition, the arguments offered in this paper also offer insights on a wide range of management debates, especially corporate social responsibility (CSR). They make a convincing argument that what appears to be an altruistic act such as giving away something is really a smart strategic move. I think the insight generated by the paper is that the company is committing a social exchange in order to gain a customer. A social exchange occurs when time and manner of repayment are unknown to both parties. The gifting of free items (much in the manner of a king) means that your largesse will lead to support. I also found the potential ethical issues (such as agency) to be very thoughtful.

Singh and Pathak offer an interesting paper on cause-related marketing (CRM) which is a type of marketing through which a firm’s CSR programs are communicated to customers. One of the major developments over the last 30 or so years is the emergence of the socially conscious customer. Increasingly, there is a group of educated, affluent consumers who view their consumption as a political act or virtue signaling. As such, we have witnessed several corporations take the lead on this issue and are promoting themselves as socially aware. The genesis of this idea came through American Express’s support of restoring the Statue of Liberty. Despite its long history, however, CRM has become very controversial as we have been dealing with the woke movement. As such, this paper addresses a major void.

I found the results of this paper to be stimulating as well. In particular, the comment of “developing countries, specifically Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) nations, have received little academic attention in the CRM context.” I would very much quibble with China being a developing country, but this raises an interesting question: to what extent is CRM something we witness in stable countries with a long market history? Each of those countries (especially Russia and China) would not be historically considered as a bastion of free market capitalism. Therefore, I am wondering if CRM is really something that is germane to the market. In addition, we can also concede that it is possible that CRM may take a different form. This is ground for future research.

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